Kelly: If imam can build bridges, why can’t he get rid of the rats?

A river runs through the life of the imam who wants to build an Islamic center near the site of America’s deadliest terrorist attack.

On one side of the Hudson — in Manhattan — Feisal Abdul Rauf has carefully tried to cast himself as a healer of religious differences.

On the Jersey side, he’s an absentee landlord whose tenants say he doesn’t pick up the garbage or get rid of rats and roaches in slum-like apartments.

Who is this guy anyway?

Melba Lopez says she knows.

To understand her perspective, you need to go to a forlorn corner on the Jersey side — to 22nd Street in Union City and a four-story apartment building owned by Rauf. The locks on a front door are broken and the hallway leading to Lopez’s two-bedroom apartment smells of urine.

Looking east on 22nd Street — back across the Hudson — the Empire State building pokes the sky. On that side of the river, New York’s mayor speaks of Rauf as a symbol of religious freedom and last week

invited the Imam’s wife, Daisy Khan, to dinner at Gracie Mansion to honor the Islamic celebration of Ramadan.

But in Union City, Lopez, a single mother, has another way of describing the man who has time to promote the so-called Ground Zero mosque, but does not seem to have time to answer her complaints about leaks in her toilet.

“Careless,” she says.

Lopez has never met Rauf. But she knows Khan, who has also played a role in promoting the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero.

Lopez says Khan, who lives with her husband in North Bergen, visited Lopez’s apartment building several months before the political controversy erupted over the Islamic center.

Lopez said she remembers Khan telling her that she and her husband did not have enough money to fix her leak and other problems in the building. What Lopez did not know was that at the same time, Rauf and Khan were trying to raise money for their mosque project on the other side of the Hudson.

Looking back on that meeting, Lopez understandably does not find much comfort in the religious healing and cultural bridge-building that Rauf and Khan are trying to promote in Manhattan. Here, in Union City, where weeds poke through the cracks in the sidewalk and paint peels from the brick wall, Melba Lopez feels the scars of a neglected tenant.

That’s a harsh judgment, to be sure. And in an interview, Daisy Khan understandably said she resented accusations by Lopez and other tenants. Later, she wrote in an e-mail that her husband “takes complaints and comments in the apartment buildings he owns very seriously.” But she added, “Some people just cannot be made happy.”

Oh. Is there a happy medium to be found with rats and roaches? With broken locks and urine smells?

Khan said the apartment building had been damaged by a fire and blamed some tenants for being careless themselves in causing damage.

But that fire occurred more than two years ago — and still the damage has not been fixed. And as for blaming tenants when garbage has not been picked up by a hauler and the heat doesn’t work and the basement is home to a colony of roaches — whose fault is that?

Khan has another explanation — one that’s tied to the work by her and her husband on the other side of the river.

“We have been working very hard since 9/11 to improve relations and improve national security,” she told me. “We have not neglected the people.”

Really? In an interview, Rauf’s building manager Adolfo Almonte described Rauf as “very gentle” and “very nice” but also “very short” on money for repairs and rarely visiting the building after he “dedicated his life to religion.”

Translation: Good intentions alone don’t fix leaks. Money talks.

In a deposition last August for a lawsuit in which he was accused of fraud after taking out an extra mortgage on Lopez’s building, Rauf claimed he was running short of money. The suit never went to trial and was settled quietly in June — with Rauf promising to pay his debts and his lawyer claiming the mortgage filing was a “mistake.”

Consider Rauf’s own words in that deposition. “I was traveling overseas a lot at that time and I just felt that this was just an unfortunate turn in my own — in my investments,” he said.

That overseas travel was all part of Rauf’s image — as the religious healer. Back in Jersey, Rauf’s personal finances were in such disarray that he could not scrape together the cash to patch the scars in a Union City apartment building. And yet he still has time to travel.

In the words and actions of Rauf and Khan, you can find the root of the dilemma that has emerged in their image campaign to gain support for the Islamic cultural center. They see themselves as “working” to fix large issues in the world. They do not see themselves as failing to “fix” the leaks in an apartment back in Union City.

They have seemingly convinced themselves they are not neglectful to the people who live on a small patch of concrete in New Jersey. They see themselves as doing a larger good in the larger world — in New York City.

“Unbelievable,” said Steven Avella, who owns a two-story home next to Rauf’s Union City building.

Avella is not talking about the rats that he says are invading his home from Rauf’s building. Nor is he talking about how Rauf can’t manage to fix fire damage that occurred in February 2008 or the fact that the awning that once shaded the front window of a candy store on the ground floor is now tattered and torn.

Avella, who fixes cars in a garage across the street from the building, is talking about another kind of damage — how a man like Rauf can transcend such separate realities, as a would-be religious healer and as a landlord with dozens of complaints in the files of the Union City health department.

This kind of story is not easy to tell amid the chorus of voices singing the praises of Rauf and religious freedom. It’s an uncomfortable tale because it doesn’t fit easily into the reality Rauf has carefully shaped for himself with the support of a gaggle of political figures.

To understand this other, uncomfortable reality, you have to cross the Hudson — to the Jersey side. On this side of the river, the issue isn’t religion. It’s rats and roaches.

Kelly: If imam can build bridges, why can’t he get rid of the rats?

A river runs through the life of the imam who wants to build an Islamic center near the site of America’s deadliest terrorist attack.

On one side of the Hudson — in Manhattan — Feisal Abdul Rauf has carefully tried to cast himself as a healer of religious differences.

On the Jersey side, he’s an absentee landlord whose tenants say he doesn’t pick up the garbage or get rid of rats and roaches in slum-like apartments.

Who is this guy anyway?

Melba Lopez says she knows.

To understand her perspective, you need to go to a forlorn corner on the Jersey side — to 22nd Street in Union City and a four-story apartment building owned by Rauf. The locks on a front door are broken and the hallway leading to Lopez’s two-bedroom apartment smells of urine.

Looking east on 22nd Street — back across the Hudson — the Empire State building pokes the sky. On that side of the river, New York’s mayor speaks of Rauf as a symbol of religious freedom and last week

invited the Imam’s wife, Daisy Khan, to dinner at Gracie Mansion to honor the Islamic celebration of Ramadan.

But in Union City, Lopez, a single mother, has another way of describing the man who has time to promote the so-called Ground Zero mosque, but does not seem to have time to answer her complaints about leaks in her toilet.

“Careless,” she says.

Lopez has never met Rauf. But she knows Khan, who has also played a role in promoting the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero.

Lopez says Khan, who lives with her husband in North Bergen, visited Lopez’s apartment building several months before the political controversy erupted over the Islamic center.

Lopez said she remembers Khan telling her that she and her husband did not have enough money to fix her leak and other problems in the building. What Lopez did not know was that at the same time, Rauf and Khan were trying to raise money for their mosque project on the other side of the Hudson.

Looking back on that meeting, Lopez understandably does not find much comfort in the religious healing and cultural bridge-building that Rauf and Khan are trying to promote in Manhattan. Here, in Union City, where weeds poke through the cracks in the sidewalk and paint peels from the brick wall, Melba Lopez feels the scars of a neglected tenant.

That’s a harsh judgment, to be sure. And in an interview, Daisy Khan understandably said she resented accusations by Lopez and other tenants. Later, she wrote in an e-mail that her husband “takes complaints and comments in the apartment buildings he owns very seriously.” But she added, “Some people just cannot be made happy.”

Oh. Is there a happy medium to be found with rats and roaches? With broken locks and urine smells?

Khan said the apartment building had been damaged by a fire and blamed some tenants for being careless themselves in causing damage.

But that fire occurred more than two years ago — and still the damage has not been fixed. And as for blaming tenants when garbage has not been picked up by a hauler and the heat doesn’t work and the basement is home to a colony of roaches — whose fault is that?

Khan has another explanation — one that’s tied to the work by her and her husband on the other side of the river.

“We have been working very hard since 9/11 to improve relations and improve national security,” she told me. “We have not neglected the people.”

Really? In an interview, Rauf’s building manager Adolfo Almonte described Rauf as “very gentle” and “very nice” but also “very short” on money for repairs and rarely visiting the building after he “dedicated his life to religion.”

Translation: Good intentions alone don’t fix leaks. Money talks.

In a deposition last August for a lawsuit in which he was accused of fraud after taking out an extra mortgage on Lopez’s building, Rauf claimed he was running short of money. The suit never went to trial and was settled quietly in June — with Rauf promising to pay his debts and his lawyer claiming the mortgage filing was a “mistake.”

Consider Rauf’s own words in that deposition. “I was traveling overseas a lot at that time and I just felt that this was just an unfortunate turn in my own — in my investments,” he said.

That overseas travel was all part of Rauf’s image — as the religious healer. Back in Jersey, Rauf’s personal finances were in such disarray that he could not scrape together the cash to patch the scars in a Union City apartment building. And yet he still has time to travel.

In the words and actions of Rauf and Khan, you can find the root of the dilemma that has emerged in their image campaign to gain support for the Islamic cultural center. They see themselves as “working” to fix large issues in the world. They do not see themselves as failing to “fix” the leaks in an apartment back in Union City.

They have seemingly convinced themselves they are not neglectful to the people who live on a small patch of concrete in New Jersey. They see themselves as doing a larger good in the larger world — in New York City.

“Unbelievable,” said Steven Avella, who owns a two-story home next to Rauf’s Union City building.

Avella is not talking about the rats that he says are invading his home from Rauf’s building. Nor is he talking about how Rauf can’t manage to fix fire damage that occurred in February 2008 or the fact that the awning that once shaded the front window of a candy store on the ground floor is now tattered and torn.

Avella, who fixes cars in a garage across the street from the building, is talking about another kind of damage — how a man like Rauf can transcend such separate realities, as a would-be religious healer and as a landlord with dozens of complaints in the files of the Union City health department.

This kind of story is not easy to tell amid the chorus of voices singing the praises of Rauf and religious freedom. It’s an uncomfortable tale because it doesn’t fit easily into the reality Rauf has carefully shaped for himself with the support of a gaggle of political figures.

To understand this other, uncomfortable reality, you have to cross the Hudson — to the Jersey side. On this side of the river, the issue isn’t religion. It’s rats and roaches.